When I was thirteen, my mom took me aside. “I have something to tell you,” she said. “I think you’re old enough now to understand. You are adopted.” Of all the things she could have said, this was the one I least expected. “You and I are blood, but you and your father are not.”
I gave her a puzzled look as if to say, “What do you mean?”
“Oliver, I am actually your aunt.”
“Then who’s my mother?” I wondered out loud.
“Your mother’s name is Naomi, and she lives in Queens, New York. When you’re older, you need to find her and get to know the other side of your family,” Mom said. I promised her I would.
“Well, who’s my dad?” I asked.
“My brother, your Uncle Doyle, is your biological father,” she told me. I’d always thought I was Doyle’s favorite nephew. All my life, he’d singled me out by doing special things for me. Now, I knew that I wasn’t his nephew, I was really his son.
I couldn’t have chosen better parents than my aunt and uncle. Thanks to them, I was a drug baby: I was drug to church every time its doors opened. Although they were very strict, they showed me a whole lot of love and instilled values of faith, family and education in me that made me who I am today. I adored them, and they adored me. They will always be Mom and Dad, for they taught me to have faith. When the going got rough and I got sidelined, Mom never failed to guide me back on course. Ironically, it was my desire to know Naomi that derailed me more than anything.
Why did she allow me to be adopted? Was she interested in what happened to me? Did she ever think of me? Want to see me? Get to know me? Be a part of my life? I was full of questions and the emotions they aroused, but empty on answers.
When I was in my thirties, I started to look for Naomi to get answers to my questions, but my search ended almost as soon as it began when I was told that she was dead. Convinced I’d missed my chance of ever knowing her, I was bitterly disappointed and angry. God knew my heart. Why had He allowed this to happen?
“Trust in God, not hearsay,” Mom told me.
Trusting God was easy when I got what I wanted, and I’d learned that I could have what I wanted if I was willing to work for it. The one exception – and the most challenging to my faith – was Naomi.
When I was in my forties, hoping against hope, I garnered enough courage to search for Naomi again. A second source confirmed that she had passed away many years before. This was not the answer to my prayers that I’d hoped for. Again, I questioned God. Why had He resurrected my hope if only to dash it?
“Don’t let Satan trick you into despair. Love never fails. Keep confident in God’s love for you in every situation,” my mother admonished me.
Thirty years of following in my parents’ wake, I’d cultivated the habit of reading God’s Word, praying and attending church. My faith grew, yet each year when holidays and birthdays rolled around and I grieved for Naomi, the burden of my grief crushed the joy in every special moment. “LORD, help me!” I cried. “I can’t shake this by myself.” Weeks later, six words from the pulpit one Sunday morning answered my prayer: “Don’t hold back. Give God everything.”
I’d always given God the good, but I’d held back the broken. Sharing everything with Him wasn’t easy. I didn’t always like what I saw in myself, but who was I fooling? God knew me inside and out. I couldn’t hide from Him. The only one I’d been hiding from was myself. When I finally shared my anger, disappointment and pain over losing Naomi, I felt truly understood. Each time I shared my lack of trust, surprisingly I trusted Him more. My walk with God grew closer.
My wife and I went on to have three great kids. When I held our firstborn, my heart exploded with love. Overwhelmed with emotion, I asked God, “Is this how You feel about me?” I knew without a doubt that it was. How wonderful that nothing could separate me from such amazing love (Romans 8:39). “Was this how Naomi felt when she first held me?” How devastating it must have been for her to let me go even if it meant I’d have a stable Christian home. Naomi blessed me by her sacrifice. The realization humbled me and filled me with gratitude.
I forged a successful career as a school principal. My life was full to overflowing when I sensed God’s call to preach. I felt unprepared and unworthy, but by then God and I had walked many dusty roads together. Time and again, He filled me with peace that defied circumstance. I was able to bring my loaves and fishes and trust Him for the rest. When Dad and Doyle passed and Mom sank into dementia, I found I was able to trust Him then, too, just as I’d first learned to trust Him with Naomi. Little did I know, but God had much more in store for me and my family.
“You know Mom likes investigating her ancestry,” my teenaged daughter said when she suggested I buy my wife a DNA kit for her birthday two years ago. I agreed to buy Tonya a kit and decided to buy myself one as well, but it took months for us to send in our swabs and even longer to delve into the results. Frankly, I lost interest.
One evening, during winter break from school, I was sitting in the family room watching a college football bowl game when my wife rushed in, her face aglow. “I’ve found the other side of your family!” she announced. Later, after a fantastic conversation with my newly-found cousin and aunt, I couldn’t help but express one regret.
“It would have been so nice if I could have known my mother before she passed away.”
“Aunt Naomi’s not dead,” my cousin informed me. I was astonished.
I’d stopped searching and grieved for years before I surrendered everything to God and
received the joy of His love. In John 13:7 (NIV), Jesus told His disciples, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” I felt as if He were speaking those words to me. Not getting what I wanted when I wanted it grew my faith and trust in God, and began to make me a man who could weather life storms empowered by His love.
My life might once have been plagued with unanswered questions, but Naomi’s had been plagued by a paralyzing fear of condemnation and rejection. From our first conversation, love cast out those fears. We eagerly looked forward to meeting one another face to face. With our work schedules and other obligations, the first opportunity was four months away on April 7th.
Through God’s grace I’d kept my promise to find Naomi and my other family. I wanted Mom to know, but she had developed full dementia. How could she possibly understand? On my next visit, my mom looked at me and asked, “Have you seen her? The lady’s looking for you. You’ll meet. You’ll see.” Could Mom somehow know I’d found my birth mother? Was the lady she was talking about Naomi?
When Mom developed pneumonia shortly thereafter, she entered hospice care. I stayed with her, talking to her quietly through the night before she passed away. Her wake was April 5th, her funeral April 6th. On April 7th, as we’d planned months before, I met Naomi.
I buried my mother on Saturday, and I met my mother on Sunday. One chapter closes, another opens through God’s orchestration alone. It’s hard to describe the emotions that I went through as I traveled to meet Naomi for the first time. I wept in grief and gratitude. And then I wept with joy, for “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Psalm 30:5 KJV).
Dr. Oliver L. Phipps is currently employed with Collier County Public School (CCPS) as the Administrator of Special Initiatives/Recruitment & Diversity.tHe is the former Principal at Shadowlawn Elementary School, and the Drum Line Instructor for Barron Collier High School (BCHS) Cougar Band, and a member of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.
Dr. Phipps, also known as Reverend Phipps. He is a spiritual leader at Unity Faith Missionary Baptist Church, who loves preaching and teaching the Word of God, as well as witnessing to people of all ages, the “Good News” of God’s Kingdom.
Dr. Phipps is happily married to Tonya Phipps, who is a middle school ESE Inclusion Teacher in CCPS. Together, God has blessed them with three beautiful children.